J’ai publié cet hiver un article dans la revue MedieKultur: Journal of Media and Communication Research avec Nicolas Bourgeois, maître de conférences en mathématiques et informatique.

Old people, video games and French press: A topic model approach on a study about discipline, entertainment and self-improvement fait partie du numéro 63 de la revue, “Growing Old with and via Media”, édité par Sara M. Iversen, dont les recherches sur les jeux vidéo et les aîné.e.s en termes de biopolitique ont inspiré les miennes.

L’article utilise la méthode du topic modeling (pour une explication et des pistes sur ses usages en sciences sociales, voir la deuxième moitié de cet article du carnet Hypothèses Data Sciences Sociales) sur un corpus d’articles de la presse généraliste francophone européenne contenant les termes “jeux vidéo” et “personnes âgées”. Il en a émergé huit “topics” qui mettent en évidence l’omniprésence de certains thèmes : la préoccupation pour la santé des individus vieillissants, l’enthousiasme pour les effets bénéfiques supposés des jeux vidéo, le statut relativement neuf du jeu vidéo comme produit culturel et manne économique. L’analyse de quelques articles du corpus confirme et nuance les résultats du topic modeling. Nous concluons que la manière dont cette presse parle des aîné.e.s et des jeux vidéo évoque non pas une panique morale à propos des jeux vidéo, quoiqu’on en voit encore quelques traces, mais une adhésion au discours du “vieillissement réussi” ou “vieillissement actif”, qui propose une lutte individualisée et moralisée contre le vieillissement.

Voici l’abstract de l’article (l’article est en anglais) :

Over the past few years, the French mainstream press has paid more and more attention to “silver gamers”, adults over sixty who play video games. This article investigates the discursive and normative paradigms that underlie the unexpected enthusiasm of the French mainstream press for older adults who play video games. We use mixed methods on a corpus of French, Swiss and Belgian articles that mention both older people and video games. First, we produce topics, that is, sets of words related by their meanings and identified with a Bayesian statistical algorithm. Second, we cross the topic model results with a discursive analysis of selected articles. We preface the topic modeling’s conclusions with a discussion of the representations of older people and video games in European French-language mainstream media. Our analysis explores how the press coverage of older people who play video games simultaneously erases moral panic about video games and reinforces the discourse of “successful ageing”.

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This winter, I published an article in MedieKultur: Journal of Media and Communication Research with Nicolas Bourgeois, maître de conférences in mathematics and computer science.

Old people, video games and French press: A topic model approach on a study about discipline, entertainment and self-improvement is in the 63d issue of the journal, “Growing Old with and via Media”, edited by Sara M. Iversen, whose research on video games and older adults have inspired and given direction to mine.

Here is the abstract:

Over the past few years, the French mainstream press has paid more and more attention to “silver gamers”, adults over sixty who play video games. This article investigates the discursive and normative paradigms that underlie the unexpected enthusiasm of the French mainstream press for older adults who play video games. We use mixed methods on a corpus of French, Swiss and Belgian articles that mention both older people and video games. First, we produce topics, that is, sets of words related by their meanings and identified with a Bayesian statistical algorithm. Second, we cross the topic model results with a discursive analysis of selected articles. We preface the topic modeling’s conclusions with a discussion of the representations of older people and video games in European French-language mainstream media. Our analysis explores how the press coverage of older people who play video games simultaneously erases moral panic about video games and reinforces the discourse of “successful ageing”.